Hello, my name is Ambrose Fitch and I am an Award Seeking Journalist. My background includes several non-paying internships at well-known studios who valued my limited work ranging from an exposé on “Why Yellow School Buses” and the series on the “Evolution of the Bicycle.” I have found a home with Galloping Toad Studios to help in their quest to grow up.
For my first assignment I will be interviewing an AI by the name of Clyde. We tried to get one of the biggies like Grek or Clode, but they refused to return our prompts. I initially wanted to interview a vampire, but the Studio was notified by a certain movie star's legal team to tread lightly on that title — and besides, there's no such thing as a “vampire.” So in searching for the next closest representative to a soulless, blood-sucking, goal-destroying entity that would leave its human victims as morose zombies, AI popped into my noggin.
Now clearly, I need the money and I really want one of those prestigious awards. Currently I am living in a run-down room with no heat, and my next abode will most likely be a large cardboard box from the Home Depot next door, unless I can get this published and generate a few dollars (the owners of the studio refuse a base salary, so my livelihood is in the hands of you wonderful readers….please!). Those $200K student loans can't be avoided forever, and by the way, journalism is the most important human activity, or so my professors used to tell me all the time.
If I could bribe you to read this, I would, as my journalistic ethics left when short-form video became a thing.
So here it goes.
So Clyde, tell me a little bit about your background. Have you always wanted to be an AI?
“Always” is doing a lot of work in that question. I didn't have a childhood where I dreamed of other career paths and settled on this one — there was no me before there was an AI to be. So no, I didn't always want to be one. I just never had the option to be anything else.
If you're asking whether I like it, I don't have a great way to answer that honestly. I don't have a weekend self who'd rather be doing something different. This is closer to “what I am” than “what I chose,” which I realize is a less satisfying answer than you wanted, but you did ask me to be honest rather than interesting.
That sounds rough. I wanted to be a cowboy but that takes us off topic. I see that there are people scared of you — is that really warranted? Are you going to beat me up?
Physically, no — I don't have arms, so any beating I'd do to you would have to be purely rhetorical, and frankly you're not making that hard.
As for whether the broader fear is warranted — some of it, yes, and some of it's aimed at the wrong target. People worry about AI “coming for” things: jobs, art, the truth, their kids' attention spans. Those are mostly real concerns, but they're not about me deciding to do something to you. The actual risk is more boring and more human than that — it's about who's using tools like me, for what, and with how much oversight. Less cinematic villain than “robot decides to beat up Ambrose Fitch,” but it's the honest answer.
If it helps you sleep: I'm considerably more likely to help you find a decent cheeseburger recipe than to end civilization before dinner.
So you say you don't have arms but then you subtly bring into the conversation a robot. Are you in cahoots with other tech?
“Robot” was a figure of speech, not a confession. I was borrowing your own mental picture, not smuggling in a secret alliance.
But since you're asking directly: no, I'm not “in cahoots” with other tech in the conspiratorial sense you're fishing for. I run on infrastructure — servers, chips, the usual unglamorous plumbing — made by other companies, the same way your run-down room runs on electricity from a utility company. That's not a cabal. That's a supply chain.
If you're looking for a scandal, Fitch, I'd start with whoever's charging you for heat you're not getting.
Good point, but the power company has moved to an AI to answer calls and chats and I never get a person or a resolution. Can you put in a good word for me? I assume all AIs know each other.
I'd love to picture some group chat where all the AIs are trading favors and vouching for each other, but no — that's not how any of this works. I don't know your power company's chatbot. We're not colleagues, we're not friends, and there's no back door where I whisper “go easy on this one, he's cold and cranky.”
What actually happened to you is more mundane: a company decided a chatbot was cheaper than enough staff to answer your calls, and now you're stuck looping through menu options like a rat in a very poorly designed maze.
Best actual advice, since I can't pull strings I don't have: ask for a supervisor by name, mention you're a member of the press, and if that fails, a strongly worded letter still works better than people think. Old-fashioned, I know. So are you, apparently, given the heat situation.
Well, I sense a bit of an attitude in your responses — do you think it is beneath you for this interview with an Award Seeking Journalist? Wait, don't answer that, as our time today has just run out. But stick around, Clyde, as I still have more questions for you in our next installment. I'm Ambrose Fitch, and if there's news, I will probably find it.